We stowed her backpack and suitcase in the Subaru along with her hockey stick. She and Pierre were spending two nights at the Trefoil Hotel. They would detour back to Florida for the Canadiens’ next playoff game, then fly to Quebec.
Mr. Contreras brought the dogs out to see us off. While Bernie knelt on the sidewalk to clutch Mitch’s neck, I told Tom Streeter, who was on duty this afternoon, that the brothers could end their surveillance for now.
“No one’s been sniffing around that I could see, Vic, but a young woman tried to get into your place this afternoon—”
“Right, Viola Mesaline. Kind of a client.”
“Yes, Mr. Contreras told me. There may have been someone on her tail, someone on a Hog. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, and I didn’t want to follow them in case they’d been sent to smoke out Bernie’s protection detail.”
My stomach turned to ice. If someone was tailing Viola—Nabiyev? Bagby? Scanlon?—it was because—how could I know why? Not because they thought she’d be easier to track than me—I had done nothing to cover my trail lately. Then because they thought she’d lead them to someone? To her brother? Which meant he was probably still alive.
“Do you want us to check in with her, see if we can spot the Hog again?” Tom Streeter asked.
I didn’t like to think how much the Streeters’ bill might run. The last few weeks, all I’d incurred was overhead, not income, but I couldn’t leave Viola naked if the Grozny Mob was after her. I agreed, but said they didn’t need to stay on her during business hours, assuming she went to her job at Ajax.
“Got it, Vic. I’ll cover you as far as the expressway.”
That was helpful, too: once we were on the glue called the Kennedy, it would be impossible to check for tails.
We seemed clean, unless the pursuit was doing it with multiple vehicles, which implies both a security team with a lot of resources—think NSA—and a target worth spending them on. The Uzbeki Mob’s finances might rival the NSA’s, but I wasn’t that kind of target. I’d be easy to take out the old-fashioned way, a good marksman with one bullet to the head. I rubbed my forehead reflexively.
I glanced over at Bernie, but she had her earbuds in and the volume turned up. She was texting friends, ignoring me, leaving me to send my brain uselessly around a maze that didn’t seem to have a center.
Where did Sebastian and the Cubs fit into this scenario? Villard had been briefly angry when I played Sebastian’s recording for him, accusing me of knowing who was on the other end of the conversation before I played it. Someone I’d met when I’d been at the ballpark? Will Drechen in Media Relations was the only man I’d talked to, and it didn’t sound like his voice.
“What are you thinking?” Bernie asked as we finally reached the airport exit. “You look angry.”
“Not angry, frustrated.”
“Are you glad I’m leaving? Uncle Sal told me I was making you worried.”
“I worry because I can’t keep you safe. When you come back in July for Northwestern’s hockey camp, I hope all this Guzzo business will be resolved so you can run from my home to the lake without my worrying that someone might hurt you.”
“And me, I am sad to leave without clearing Uncle Boom-Boom’s name. And of course, I am happy that we have met,” she added as a formal afterthought. “Also the dogs and Uncle Sal. And Jake. I know Uncle Sal is sorry I’m going.”
“Yes, you’ve brightened his life,” I agreed.
When we reached the O’Hare parking garage, I passed up the first few open spaces to make sure that none of the cars following us up the ramp was sticking with us.
Pierre’s plane was on time, a miracle on the route between O’Hare and the Northeast. He ran through the revolving doors at the security exit, bag over his shoulder, and scooped his daughter into his arms.
As soon as she saw him, Bernie’s animation returned. Father and daughter exclaimed in French for a moment until Pierre turned to embrace me. “Ah, so good to see you, Victoire, much too long since we were last together. Thank you for caring so tenderly for our tourbillon.”
He brushed Bernie’s hair from her forehead, saw the fading bruises where she’d scraped her face against the concrete. “Yes, petite, you’ve had far worse injuries on the ice rink, that is for sure. As for you, V.I., you look much more like Boom-Boom with that nose and your face all green, but it’s a badge of courage. Arlette and I, we don’t forget that you saved our darling’s life.”
“After putting it at risk,” I said dryly.
He made a dismissive gesture. “Bernadine has a gift for mischief, so enough of that. Now—you must be my guest for dinner. Not much of a thanks—for that, as soon as the hockey season ends—as soon as the Canadiens defeat the Blackhawks for the Stanley Cup—you will come for a week or a month or a summer to the Laurentians, right?”